


All By Myself

by PeppermintGlow



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Character Death, Gen, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other, don't read this it's painful, people die and then people kill themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:42:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6213082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeppermintGlow/pseuds/PeppermintGlow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hansol is afraid of one thing, and one thing only: being left alone. Luckily, he is surrounded by his 12 other team mates... right? RIGHT?!</p><p>Note: MAJOR character death. Gory blood 'n' guts. This is probably the worst thing I've done my whole life. If you actually like Seventeen, don't read this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All By Myself

He was the last one into the van: he clambered in, exhausted, the dark smudges under his eyes growing more pronounced. Seungkwan didn’t mind when he leaned his head on his shoulder: in fact, the elder put his arm around Vernon’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he mumbled softly, wary of the already seeping Woozi beside him. “Home, for a little bit anyway. Sleep.”  
  
Vernon nodded slowly, and let his eyes slip closed. It seemed to be such an innocent gesture. He was just closing his eyes. He was just a little sleepy.  
  
His body was thrown: as he woke, it seemed that he was in the air forever. When he landed, hellish screeches of torturous demons filled his ears. For a few seconds, he was numb: there wasn’t a part of his body he could feel. And then it hit: the searing pain going through the right side of his body where he had slammed against the dashboard of the van. Right now, the gearshift was wedged against his ribs, digging into his flesh, allowing him to suffer excruciating pain. Hansol choked: he coughed, and then his lungs worked again. They bellowed, big and small, trying to provide his body and brain with the necessary oxygen: the motions stung like the stabbing of knives.  
  
The boy pushed himself off the gearshift, crying out in pain as a dislocated wrist protested in sharp pain. He tried to see: through the dark of night and the black smoke he tussed his curly head up to the driver.  
  
Doogi-PDnim sat there, slumped over the steering wheel. The pool of blood gathering under the seat was dripping from his arms and head. His lifeless limbs were alabaster white, dripping in what seemed to be black blood. When Hansol saw the thick, meaty slit the glass had made in the man’s throat and smelled the rotten fleshy burns, he promptly threw up, choking on his own bile. He swivelled onto his belly again, missing the gearshift this time, adding the fumes of stomach acid to the rank, burning, salty fumes of blood and benzene.  
  
But Vernon was not a weak boy. Not now. He couldn't afford to be. He steeled his mind and clenched his body: he got up out of his last meal and Doogi’s blood, and forced himself up a bit further.  
  
Seungcheol and Soonyoung should have been in the passenger’s seats. But they weren’t.  
  
Fingers trembling, Hansol gripped the passenger’s seat: weak, shaking muscles pulled him onto shards of glass atop the soft cover. He could feel the fluids in his head swerving from side to side with the exertion, and he was pretty sure he was bleeding somewhere – for now, at least, the searing pain in his right arm was taking precedence. Hansol took one look at it, and spontaneously gagged at the misshapen flesh, but there was nothing left in his stomach to come up. Instead, he choked on his gag reflex for a minute before gripping the dashboard with his left, dislocated hand and took in a thick gulp of air.  
  
Bone was visible on his right arm. _Bone._ His flesh had been stripped straight from him. The lower half of his calf had been stripped away entirely, bone and all.  
  
_How am I alive?_ he thought. Then, as the smoke dissipated, his frightened eyes darted through the night air.  
  
The truck that was collided with the van was huge – no wonder the van was crumpled like an accordion. The driver of the opposite vehicle lay splattered out on its hood, a meat bag of only about half its organs and limbs.  
  
Seungcheol and Soonyoung were on the hood of the van, their blood dripping down it. Something lopped out of somebody’s head with a sickening, squelching sound in the darkness, and Vernon didn’t want to think of what it could be.  
  
Men in white and yellow arrived on the scene: Vernon couldn’t comprehend why, who, what. They put their hands on Vernon’s leaders, and he wanted to scream. He wanted to tell them to get away. He wanted to keep these predators away from men he loved and respected. But he couldn’t. It was like he had no throat.  
  
A hand touched his, and all went black.  
  
When he came to, he was riding another van. Smaller. Packed full.  
  
“Shhhhhhh,” a voice murmured calmly. It was dim, in the furthest reaches of his mind. Chan? “Hyung, it’s alright.” Dino’s thin eyes came into view, bringing the boy much-needed relief. “You’re going to be okay. You’re in an ambulance.”  
  
“Chan,” Vernon choked out. Tears finally came forth from his eyes as he looked up in desperation. Pain seared, but he had to ask. He had to know. “How many…? How many?”  
Dino’s eyes darted away, just for a second, and then came back. “Just us three.”  
  
The sickening, sharp smell of medicinal units came to Vernon, then, making him wince. He glossed over the faces of paramedics to look at the bed beside him: there, Seungkwan lay. His face was mauled, almost beyond recognition, dripping in thick red streams, the stench pervading all else. There was a mask over his face. Somebody was holding something against the boy’s side.  
  
“Lungs,” Dino cracked out. “The smoke.”  
  
“You?”  
  
“I'm well enough.”  
  
“What-”  
  
Vernon never got a chance to ask Dino what had happened to him. To them. How Dino had gotten away scotch-free. Because then there was another deafening crash like the crackling of thunder, but louder. Metal screamed, tires crawled to a halt. For a moment, the boy was disoriented.  
  
Then he got up. The restraints of the bed were easily undone: they had barely been closed properly in the paramedic’s haste.  
  
The ambulance was deformed: the metal was punched and bent. Fire was in the front compartment: he could smell it.  
  
Dino’s body, his young, little body – only a sweet sixteen years old – was slumped over the bench. Eyes closed. Chest unmoving. Blood trickling down the side of his head.  
  
Seungkwan was still breathing. Seungkwan was still breathing. _Seungkwan was still breathing_. Vernon could hear the boy’s racked gasps beside him.  
  
Vernon hurried to the floor: his legs wouldn’t hold, but on all fours he could crawl: a brief fight with the doors proved he would not open them. The dents in the ambulance were not small, and the paramedics were down, but there was a sliver of air coming through the corner. Where the doors had been bashed in, they had come off the floor of the ambulance.  
  
Dawn was coming. Vernon could see, through the rising smoke in this ambulance, the outside world was becoming lighter. The sun was rising. A last glimmer of hope struck through him like a knife.  
  
Seungkwan was still breathing.  
  
With all the courage he could muster, Hansol denied himself the luxury of pain: on his knees he unstrapped his best friend in the whole world from his bed and pulled him down. Dragging Seungkwan over the floor Vernon poked his legs through the hole, then his hips, then shimmied his shoulders through. He pulled Seungkwan through onto the cold road, and then kept dragging until they were on the curb, away from the smoke. By the time the air was safe to breathe, Vernon’s whole body was trembling with exertion.  
  
Dino. Lee Chan. He could still be alive. He could just be concussed. Dino could still be alive. That thought alone brought Vernon back to his knees: slowly, he scrabbled over the road. He would retrieve Dino. If nothing else, he would save that boy from the smoke, from the flames, from-  
  
In a burning blast of fire, the ambulance exploded. The rooftop came down on itself. Debris burned as it flew overhead. 

 

* * *

 

  
Two hopeless days later, Boo Seungkwan passed away in the Intensive Care Unit of his injuries. He had never become conscious after the paramedics had pulled him from the van.  
  
The doctors were optimistic about Hansol’s condition. The boy would survive. He would be handicapped all his life, confined to a wheelchair, but he would live. He would live. Out of the fourteen people that had been in the van – he, Hansol, would live.  
  
But they had not anticipated - could never have suspected - that the boy's one and only fear was meeting him head-on. Death wasn't something that scared the seventeen-year-old boy. Loneliness was.

"You're going to live, boy," they had told him.  
  
_Oh, but I won’t_ , thought Vernon. _Oh, but I really won’t._

  
When Vernon was discharged from the hospital a year and two months later, the doctor should never have given him his own pain medication.  
  


* * *

  
Tears came to the boy’s eyes as Seungcheol’s warm arms went around him. “Hansol,” he said, his voice disappointed, yet relieved. “You shouldn’t have done that.” The sound of his voice broke the small boy in his arms.  
  
Vernon couldn’t stop crying as he gripped his friend’s body. “I missed you!” he cried loudly. “I missed you so much!”  
  
“Shhhhh… it’s okay now. We’re all together now.”  
  
Vernon looked up: through his tears, there they all were. They came to form a circle around him, and they hugged him. “I’m not alone anymore,” the boy choked out, tears running in happiness. “I’m not alone.”  
  
“Never, ever again,” Seungkwan promised in his ear. “Never, ever, ever.”


End file.
